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Meshell Ndegeocello: No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin review – a fire reignited
Baldwin’s stinging words on race and America are matched with the kind of musical eloquence that the great writer himself so admired
Music to him was the highest form of communication – he was friends with Nina Simone and once performed with Ray Charles at Carnegie Hall – and he aspired to translate its emotional force and endless ambiguities as best he could into “the disastrously explicit medium of language”. Ndegeocello plays with the musical touchstones of Baldwin’s heyday – Simone’s stately chords, Marvin Gaye’s sensual ache, the agitated declarations of the Last Poets – without stiffening into historical reenactment. Raise the Roof is a hot blast of rage over the killings that inspired Black Lives Matter, escalating to a staccato battlecry: “Scream, wail, march, meet, gather, plan, strategise.”
Or read this on The Guardian
